Dutch West Indian Chicken Kebabs

This is a dish of three continents. I tasted it at a restaurant in Curaçao, but its roots lie in the East Indies, specifically Java. In Papiamento, the local dialect—a musical blend of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and West African languages—boka means mouth and dushi means sweet. The seasonings and spices for the dish are sold at the Floating Market in Willemstad, a colorful flotilla of Venezuelan produce boats that make a thirty-five-mile journey to sell comestibles from South